Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 3 - From Marx to Mao

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
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just enough to keep body and soul together.”* It is quite
natural that under such conditions the capitalists who
dominate the whole trade are in no hurry to open their
own workshops, and the industry, based on hand skill and
traditional division of labour, stagnates in its seclusion and
immobility. Tied to the land, the “handicraftsmen” seem
to have become petrified in their routine: as in 1879, so in
1889, they still count money in the old style, in banknotes
and not in silver.
The toy industry in Moscow Gubernia is headed similarly
by establishments of the capitalist-manufactory type.**
Of 481 workshops, 20 have over 10 workers each. Division
of labour, both as to wares and as to individual operations,
is practised on a very wide scale, enormously raising the
productivity of labour (at the cost of crippling the worker).
For example, it is estimated that a small workshop
yields a return of 26% of the selling price, and a big workshop,
one of 58%.*** Of course, the fixed capital of the
big proprietors is also much larger; technical devices are
met with (for example, drying sheds). The centre of the
industry is a non-agricultural township, the suburb of Sergiyevsky
(where there are 1,055 workers out of a total
of 1,398, with an output to the amount of 311,000 rubles
out of a total of 405,000 rubles; the population, according
to the 1897 census, numbers 15,155). The author of the
article on this industry, referring to the prevalence of small
workshops, etc., considers it more, but still not very, likely
that the industry will develop into manufacture rather than
into factory industry. “In the future, too,” he says, “the
small producers will always be able to compete more or less
successfully with large-scale production” (loc. cit., 93).
The author forgets that in manufacture the technical basis
is always the same hand-production that obtains in the small
industries; that the division of labour can never be such a
* Transactions of the Handicraft Commission, Vol II, 1879.
See also Zemstvo statistical Material for Semyonov Uyezd, Vol. XI,
1893.
** The statistics we have given (Appendix I to Chapter V,
Industries Nos. 2, 7, 26) cover only a small fraction of the toy-makers;
but these data show the appearance of workshops with 11 to 18
workers.
*** Statistical Returns for Moscow Gubernia, Vol. VI, Pt. II, p. 47.